war_among_the_starsfandomcom-20200213-history
The Graviton Drive
The Graviton Drive is a practical method of interstellar travel at a reasonable rate. The Graviton Drive is powered by the fifth gauge boson, the Graviton; the others being photons, gluons, and W and Z bosons. These gauge bosons mediate the four fundamental forces of the universe, electromagnetism, the strong force, the weak force and gravity. Gravitons, as their name suggest, mediate the force of gravity. They are usually the last to be discovered by sentient life as they are 'massless' and almost undetectable. Indeed, many sapient life forms obliterate themselves through use of the strong nuclear force before ever discovering the true mediator, the gluon and thus never discover the graviton. Upon its discovery the Free State acted with a universal progression of thought. At first they tried to either propel a craft by 'expelling' Gravitons from the rear of the craft or to the front, creating a deep gravity well 'dragging' the craft forward. Whilst effective, it required a huge amount of energy to constantly produce the Gravitons and had disastrous side, effects, leaving gravity trails behind which could have pulled planets out of orbit if continously subjected to the forces. After often catastrophic initial testing, as if there is some grand order to the universe, the scientists of The Realm reached the conclusion that a graviton field is the answer. Here Gravitons are produced at the beginning of a journey and continuously circulated around the craft. This creates a dense pocket of gravity which warps space around the craft, effectively 'moving' space while craft remains stationary. In combination with conventional propulsion of the craft itself within the pocket, this allows near instantaneous travel of any distance. As the pocket whips space past it affects the space. The most abundant of the bosons, photons, are the main victim of the graviton drive. During transit the pocket of gravity will warp space around it but also attract matter from outside the immediate area of space being warped. Because their paths attempt to avoid any larger objects by thousands of miles, it is mostly the light emmited from the celestial objects which is drawn in. The result is a helix shaped cylindrical trail led 'behind' the craft, often surrounded by a larger fractal pattern of light. Although it dissipates quickly, this trail bears a resemblance to the the rifling barrels of many early chemical propulsion weapons common to all civilisations and thus has earned transit by Graviton Drive the name 'SpaceShot' Due to need to avoid celestial objects, paths must be plotted carefully before hand and can take at best minutes and at worst hours. All craft wishing to do so must have an on board supercomputer to achieve said calculation speed. The density of the galaxy's centre prevents the use of a Graviton Drive. The other major shortcoming of the drive is its inability to cross 'dark space'; the space between galaxies and their arms. The reason for this is Space shots are calculated using celestial luminosity and thus positioning. This is done by creating smaller pockets to allow sensory photons to travel 'faster than light' to give sensory feedback. To go from one galaxy to another would require light detection technology with an accuracy of unfathomable extents; one billionth of a decimal place wrong would put a craft over a trillion kilometres off course. Category:The Free State Category:Technology Category:FTL